


Dad's New Boyfriend

by volpeanon



Category: Prototype (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Cross Lives Bitch, Humor, M/M, Post-Game, primarily there to be little shits and take years off Cross's life, very poorly developed original characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:41:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volpeanon/pseuds/volpeanon
Summary: How did the Wisemen take this whole 'captain's fucking the viral nightmare' thing anyway?
Relationships: Robert Cross/Alex Mercer
Comments: 5
Kudos: 108





	Dad's New Boyfriend

**Author's Note:**

> Shetan89 this started as a jokey reply to your question 'how did they find out' and it got out if hand real fast, so all of this is certifiably Your Fault lmao I'm fucking with my own timeline again but eh, I'll bend over backwards to make these boys SOFT as can be. It's 1am. I have a problem.

Morgan noticed first. He had a habit of keeping an eye on Cross already, and after the previous debacle ('with respect, sir, if you dare tell us that 'we're safer not knowing' we  _ will _ barricade you in your room' to which Cross gave him a glower that said 'try it' but did admit that he was in contact with Mercer) he was watching with extra care anyway.

Mercer was helpful on the field, they had to give him that - even when he was keeping a low profile and pretending to be your average enhanced soldier, riding along with them like a stray dog attaching itself to anyone who'd feed it. Nobody was one hundred percent  _ fine _ with it, but after a while, sure, he was handy to have around, and hadn't turned on them yet. All the same, the first day he showed up in Red Crown? That was a shitshow. Everyone drawn up taught like a bowstring - half of them still suspicious that Mercer was going to  _ do _ something, the rest just unhappy that he was capable of getting in, that he felt like he could cross that line with them. And that led Morgan to wonder why Mercer, skittish and withdrawn,  _ would _ want to, and feel invited to, come hang out with them.

He watched Mercer hover close to Cross just easily enough to make it seem natural; watched him flicker his pale, creepy eyes over the captain every time he moved; watched the way the rest of the room sat like statues with piercing gazes and Cross never so much as flinched, never gave it a second glance when the monster in a dead man's face sat beside him.

He got so wrapped up in how it looked more like a predator eyeing up it's next meal, that he didn't even notice Cross until it was obvious. How he seemed drawn to Mercer in a way that couldn't have been conscious. The closing space between them that would have set Morgan's alarms going even if one of them wasn't flesh-eating. The hovering eyes; the lingering looks.

He spent a hot minute genuinely wondering if any infected were known to produce… mind altering pheremones.

By that time, the Lieutenant had noticed something too. Their eyes met whenever Mercer was distracted. Funnily enough, it was her who pointed out "I've seen teenage boys more subtle about glueing their eyes to an ass than Zeus".

"Jesus, you mean it's-"

"Oh, big time."

"I thought it was just- I don't know, like, a predator luring in prey. Snakes hypnotising rabbits. Something like that, the way he gets close to Cross-"

She gave him a look. "You know that's bullshit, right? The snake stuff?"

"Sure, but my point is, who the fuck knows what an infected like him can do."

"I dunno," her expression was dubious "But it's not  _ just  _ Mercer I'm worried about."

More of them caught on after that. Sideways, disbelieving looks were tossed back and forth. The Wisemen were all pretty much as close as they were going to get - they'd seen each other naked more times than they could count and they'd all hauled and been hauled from the jaws of death by one another. So they  _ knew _ it was different when they saw it, as surely as they knew anything, and a question started to arise, hovering unspoken between them.

_ Who was going to say something? _

As it turned out, they shouldn't have left it off so long, because then Willems got it into his head to be the one. To top off his 'unique' intrapersonal skills, he did it the day Morgan watched Mercer leaning in around Cross's shoulder to read the file he was flicking through. He wasn't sitting at the right angle to see if Mercer was touching Cross or not, but Morgan just knew by then that they would be pressed together, snatching the moment, Mercer's chin on Cross's shoulder. Mercer murmured something; Cross laughed softly and bumped their hips in an insincere admonishment. The lazy, comfortable, lingering motions of it caught Morgan off guard.

That was his  _ oh shit _ moment, when he realised he was watching a man fall in love.

That evening Willems caught Cross in a quiet corridor. "Sir." his usual resting bitch face had an edge to it that Cross caught immediately "I need to talk to you about this."

"This?" Cross raised an eyebrow.

"The situation with Mercer, sir."

"What about it?"

"Do you think it's a good idea? Getting this close to him?" he noticed the stiffness run up Cross's body, but he hadn't got where he was by turning back at the first sign of danger "Credit where credit's due, he's helpful, and all respect, sir, but he's still a runner, and one bred to  _ fool _ humans. I think you're letting yourself forget that."

An almost disbelieving beat of silence hung between them. Willems expected, more than anything, a 'mind your own goddamn business' - Cross was a private man, he wouldn't begrudge him that. But the fact that that  _ wasn't _ what he got made everything a lot more complicated. "Are you serious? Willems, I've never heard anything so goddamn stupid out of you. If he wanted to turn on us, he would've done it, he would've done it the second he had us all in a room together and it would've been over before you could scream.  _ You _ need to remember where you are on the food chain."

"I'm not saying, sir, that he has a master plan. I'm saying it's in his nature and we don't know-"

"Shut the  _ fuck _ up." Willems had never even heard such a venomous hiss from Cross before "I don't want to hear shit like that from you  _ ever _ again, do you hear me? You don't know how he works, you don't know what's in his head, you don't get to decide that he's an animal to be put down! If you want to keep believing Blackwatch's bullshit, you can do it on another team, because I won't have you on mine. He's more than proven himself. We are the  _ last _ people who get to judge him.  _ Dismissed _ ."

Like a child sent to their room, Willems slunk back to the barracks, where the lieutenant wrung the whole exchange out of him just about word for word before she thumped him with her boot so hard his teeth clattered. "Oh my  _ god _ ," she folded her hands on top of her head, marching in circles "You're so fucking stupid, you fucked up real bad, you-" and then a list of Hawaiian expletives no one understood but could estimate the intention of pretty easily.

It did not allay the tension. Everyone knew everyone else was  _ aware _ of everything, and small moments when Mercer invaded Cross's personal space lost the genuine, easy air about them, becoming pointed and deliberate. It was a standoff, and as much as Cross clearly hated the feeling of eyes on him for something as small and personal as a slide of Mercer's hand down his arm, he had to make it known he wasn't backing down.

Miserable and uneasy, the Wisemen said no more.

Until one day something  _ changed _ . A simple patrol; an almost routine moment when the lieutenant glanced over to see Cross standing still, eyes narrowed up at the rooftops above them. "I'll be back before you turn in," he said, and disappeared off. She didn't say anything. Wasn't her place to.

But he came back different. Not the different they'd all been dreading, Mercer nowhere to be seen and a hungry flash in his eye. There was just…  _ something _ .

De Armas, it turned out, knew what.

"They  _ fucked _ ." he whispered, wide eyed, to Morgan one morning, making him spit water all over the table. The rumpled Cross, who had arrived unusually late for breakfast, spared the scene only an uninterested pre-coffee glance.

" _ What? _ " Morgan tried to both splutter and whisper "How the fuck could you know that?"

"Fuckin' use your eyes, dude. I'm telling you now but I was pretty sure before. You know. I can  _ tell _ ." then he wrinkled his nose and Morgan remembered, almost with another spittake, that de Armas had those weird extra enhancements, like being able to move his eyes independently of one another-

-and a sense of smell almost as good as a dog's.

Morgan shot him a look. He just gave him one back.

"Oh, Jesus," Morgan groaned into his hands "I'd rather not know."

It couldn't go on like that, worse than awkward and no one really happy on either side. It was an odd thing that broke it, in the end.

They thought all the biggest hunters were dead. So it was the worst kind of surprise when one leapt out of nowhere, flattening Mercer under its huge forefeet and seizing him by the back of his neck, pulling and  _ wrenching  _ him side to side until he  _ screamed. _ The team weren't so bad that they didn't scrabble to attack, especially not with that awful noise ringing in their ears, but of course, no one was as fast as Cross, sprinting across the road roaring out  _ Alex! _ , jamming his arm and launcher in between its teeth and trying to lever its jaws apart. When it was forced to let go of Mercer it turned its frustration on Cross, snagging him by the heavy launcher and crushing it and his arm together.

It wasn't so much that Mercer rolled right back in to kill it, even as his savaged back and neck were still open and raw - it was that when he'd ripped its guts out and it dropped Cross to stagger and shriek, he darted in, snatching Cross up and vaulting him out of there. In the stinking, liquidating aftermath, the Wisemen looked at each other, and at Mercer - his own wounds totally forgotten as he helped Fielding patch what they could of Cross's ruined arm. He was shaking. His spiel of calm reassurances -  _ stay awake, the heli'll be here soon, you're gonna be fine _ \- trembled. Cross held one of his quivering hands to his chest and ended up being the one doing more reassuring, gently coaxing him to fix himself before the medics came.

There was no expectation of a break or a plus one on the heli; they took off with Cross and left the rest to finish their rounds, which Mercer stayed to help with. By the time they made it back to Red Crown, Cross was in surgery. The lieutenant pulled the team off into quiet corners in stages, a handful at a time. Her suggestion was met with a muted assortment of affirmations every time. And so, when someone came by with a "he's not awake yet, but he's in the ward", everyone made a point of being busy, of ignoring Mercer's jerky, sudden lurch to his feet, the lieutenant's nonchalant glance up.

"Hey, Mercer?" she made a point of still fussing with her papers "Do me a favour - can you go keep an eye on him, be there when he wakes? He's not great at anaesthetics, y'know, freaks him out a bit when he's all woozy."

There was a pause; she had to glance up again to meet Mercer's hesitant eyes.

"He'll be better for seeing you're okay."

Mercer swept the room slowly, something like realisation flickering in his gaze. He finally settled back on her, and, after a moment, mumbled "Sure." 

There was another pause when he got to the door. He said, quietly, "Thanks." and headed to the infirmary. They all sat there in silence for a while.

It was Willems who put his book down and said "Okay, I guess he's alright."

"Do better than that, please," Fisher rolled his eyes.

"He's still a weird thing to make friends with but I believe it now."

A pregnant moment of silence.

"You realise they're fucking, right?"

"W- they're what? They're  _ what _ !?"

The whole room erupted into laughter, and things got easier after that.


End file.
